


Fascination and Obsession

by CavannaRose



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: F/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7830163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CavannaRose/pseuds/CavannaRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You watch the Castithans, work among them, obsess about them... but never expected for him to observe you in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fascination and Obsession

**Author's Note:**

> I rarely write from this perspective, but the idea wouldn't leave my head. I'm breaking it into five parts for my own sanity, but I'm not sure if it will even be any good. The first chapter is really just scene setting.

There was just something about Castithans. Some people, humans with superiority complexes and angry Irathients mostly, called them 'Haints'. They looked at that glorious pale skin, that silky white hair, those brilliant eyes and saw ghosts of the old worlds. Not you, though. You saw beyond their ethereal appearance. You watched with hungry eyes as they moved, every motion graceful, even among the lowest of them. More than anything, though, you devoured the way they touched. It wasn't casual, but a deliberate and constant seeking of physical contact. A reminder of togetherness, something your own people had thrown away long before the Arkfalls.

It was not just that you were lonely, but that you were alone. Unlike so many others, you had no memory of the Earth that Was, no fond recollections of the good old days. You were raised in the bones of your people's past lives, but refused to romanticize the concept. Humans were a lonely people, and they didn't even know it. Truly, the only race that touched less than the humans was perhaps the Indogenes, but they, at least, had their science to comfort them.

Defiance was not a bad place, though it was not, perhaps, the good that so many protested it was. It was an acceptable place to live, nothing more, nothing less. They tried, though. The different races, Votan and human, to work together in something resembling harmony. It's what had brought you here in the first place. You had risked the dangers of the Badlands to come and observe. To watch the way the aliens worked together. To see who would bend, and who would break.

Despite the rumours, the racial mix wasn't that diverse, though rarely had you seen so many Indogenes in one place. It was almost as if all that made it off the Ark had eventually ended up in this one city. They were a rare people, pretty in their own way. Like white lizards basking on rocks, but their brusque nature and constant busywork was unsettling, and extremely unlizardlike. You'd seen a few Sensoths, one or two Liberata, even a handful of Irathients, but the true makeup of Defiance was human and Castithan, and they seemed to have themselves rather well segregated. A disappointment, but not unexpected.

Castithans were an arrogant people, clinging to their old ways despite the new world. They could have used the Arkfalls to change, to grow, to become something more, but instead they clung to tradition all the harder. It was... part of the allure. It was why you watched them. You were clever, far more clever than you'd ever let on. Months of watching had taught you more about the pale aliens than years of living beside them had taught the fools of Defiance. The language, the subtle cues that were the Castithans constant reminders about where one stood, they took a keen ear to detect. You were fairly sure you'd caught the nuances though. At the end of the day, when you retired from your observant perch, you practiced. Mimicking that speedy, clipped delivery system their speech took on.

Still, one could not spend all their time watching the ethereal people go about their daily business. If you wished to keep a roof over your head, you had to earn. Jobs weren't the easiest to come by, but you'd managed to slide around in the dark corners enough to pick up scrip here and there. Nothing technically illegal, you were pretty sure, but it wasn't exactly legal either. None of that mattered as long as you stayed out of the sharp gaze of the Lawkeeper. Despite your observant nature, you failed to notice another set of eyes settling over you, more and more often.

It was pathetic, really. How much time you spent mimicking Casti gestures and behaviours in your free time. You'd even increased the frequency of your own private ablutions. Such things went unnoticed by your fellow humans, they just didn't have the nose to notice, and what did a bunch of aliens care about one slightly less smelly human?

For one, it was enough.

Yellow eyes had come to rest on your figure more and more as the weeks went by. At first, he'd assumed you were spying for Nolan, but the admiration on your face quickly put the lie to that thought. Long white fingers tapped lightly on the arm of his chair as he watched you weave in and amidst the betting natives, taking their money and dutifully reciting the odds. You were good at following orders, and this let you come as close as you ever did to touching a Castithan. Oh sure you could always go down to the Need/Want, but that required more scrip than you cared to earn. You'd have to give up your watching days to make enough.

At the end of the fights, you and the other bet-runners dutifully lined up to collect your wage from the Sensoth. He was nice, and sometimes snuck treats to some of the littler ones. When your turn came he shook his head, gestured for you to step aside and wait. Confused, you did what you were told, mind racing over the night. Had you misrepresented the odds somewhere? Dropped scrip? What could you have possibly done? As the room emptied, your nerves amped up, suddenly you were certain that the very pragmatic Castithan that ran this establishment was going to clean up your mess the way they always did... With a dead body.

Still, you would not flee. Castithan's despised cowardice. Besides, cowardice often spawned from a sense of self-preservation, and to desire that you had to have a life worth living. You took a deep breath, calming yourself, stilling the twitching of your hands. You would be calm as the pale aliens you spent so much time observing, even if it killed you... Which it very well could.

Finally he approached you, and you felt a tremble go through your spine. He had become the most powerful Castithan man in Defiance, through cleverness and ambition. Many of your days of observation had been spent watching him, for if he was not the epitome of their society, who was? He had been from one of the lower liro back before the fall, or so you had heard, but had married up. From there he'd wrested control until, as far as the Castithans in Defiance were concerned, he was something akin to a King by old Earth terms, or at least that's what it seemed to you.

No one in the Hollows defied him, and the way his gaze raked over you, you weren't sure if perhaps not fleeing had been a bad idea. Had you upset him? Biting your bottom lip you stood a little straighter, keeping your eyes straight ahead as he made a slow circuit around you, observing. "You're cleaner than most humans I've encountered."

That... was not what you had expected to hear. You startled, wide eyes searching his yellow ones with confusion and curiosity. "P-pardon?" You winced, disgusted by the hitch in your voice.


End file.
